1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a peripheral object detection system and a haulage vehicle, and especially to a technology that makes it possible to reduce the number of parts and components used in peripheral monitoring surroundings of such a haulage vehicle.
2. Description of the Related Art
In so-called open-pit mining that rock and ore are excavated and delivered at the bottom of a mine, each haulage vehicle (hereinafter called “dump truck”) repeats operation that upon completion of loading of excavated rock, it hauls the excavated rock from the excavation site to a dumping site and dumps the excavated rock there, and travels back again to the excavation site. The haulage rate per unit time of rock, which is hauled by each dump truck, is a matter linked directly to the progress of excavation so that the haulage of rock requires each dump truck to travel at high speed. To efficiently haul rocks in bulk out of the excavation site, a plurality of dump trucks travel back and forth many times between the excavation site and the dumping site along a haulage road. It is, accordingly, important to take preventive measures for collision accidents between on-going and on-coming dump trucks themselves.
In excavation work at mines, there is also an outstanding demand for unmanned haulage vehicles (hereinafter called “unmanned dump trucks”), which can perform autonomous traveling without operators on board, with a view to achieving improved safety and lowered mining costs.
As a technology for allowing an unmanned mobile object to perform autonomous traveling, JP2009-175932A is known. This patent document discloses a configuration that forward profile data are acquired as data in a sensor coordinate system by a laser range finder and that based on geometric feature values of data obtained by converting the first-mentioned data from the sensor coordinate system into an orthogonal coordinate system and those of prior data acquired beforehand, a region on a forward side is processed and divided into a travelable area and an untravelable area.
An unmanned dump truck that travels in a mine travels in reverse upon dumping at a dumping site. Measures are, therefore, also important for conforming the area backward of the unmanned dump truck during its backward traveling. In this respect, nothing is taken into consideration in JP2009-175932A. Further, any attempt to apply the technology of JP2009-175932A as a technology for confirming areas forward and backward of the unmanned dump truck requires laser range finders for the confirmation of the areas forward and backward of the unmanned dump truck, so that the problem of higher manufacturing costs for such unmanned dump trucks remains unsolved. Even with a manned haulage vehicle (hereinafter called “the manned dump truck”) that travels with an operator onboard, a blind spot is formed in each of forward and backward fields of view. Therefore, the above-described problem also arises in the manned dump truck in much the same way as in the unmanned dump truck.
With the above-described problems in view, the present invention has as objects thereof the provision of a peripheral object detection system, which can perform at lower costs the detection of objects existing in forward and backward peripheries of a vehicle, and a haulage vehicle with the peripheral object detection system mounted thereon.